Mix mind, body, games and nature to grow great teams and leaders

A past client reflects on what stuck for him

|Recently, a past client gave me some feedback about our distinctive work together. I had checked in to ask whether that was paying off for him.

Over a year ago, he and nine of his peers had partnered with me to accelerate their formation as a high-performing team. They were all co-enrolled in a training program that gave them just 10 months to succeed on individual and mutual goals, with the big purpose of advancing their respective careers.

Our approach to jump-starting this bunch into an effective team was a full day of outdoor embodied action learning. Members went outside to puzzle, play, stretch, test, explore, compete, strategize, organize, quit, persevere, cooperate, innovate, evaluate, interpret, discover, … all by choice. And all on their own terms, within a limited set of constraints. They undertook carefully curated challenges requiring coordinated mental and physical exertion. Some of the latter was quite strenuous.

Why this approach?

As the old proverb warns, “Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the body.” This wisdom pervades embodied action learning, which catalyzes whole-brain, whole-person, whole-system development. * The somatic experience that participants have activates their entire sensory-motor nervous system. That helps to connect their emotional-heart intelligence and body-gut intelligence (EQ and BQ) with their head smarts (IQ). When it’s really rocking, embodied